Arena Blog

Branching Development in Arena BOMControl

When you’re developing new products, branching into two development paths is an important part of your process. You need to be able to work on both designs simultaneously, and you need a PLM system that makes it easy.

The Duplicate functionality in Arena BOMControl allows you to branch development on an assembly at any time during your development process, creating an exact copy with a new item number. You can do this with assemblies in the design or production stage of the item lifecycle. Not only will you get a new item with a BOM identical to the original, you can also choose to include the history of the original item, to ensure traceability.

You can continue developing both items, releasing new revisions independently. When one design wins, so to speak, you can phase the other assembly out by making it obsolete with a change order.

Using BOMControl for branching development also gives you a simple way to compare two assemblies side by side. This helps you analyze differences and make an informed decision about which direction to pursue.

The in-context where-used menus in BOMControl help users stay aware of components that appear in multiple BOMs.

I hope this helps you better understand how to manage two development paths in Arena BOMControl.